i really wanted to do another one before the outdoor swimming season ended around here and i picked the pineman at deer creek state park this weekend. i knew i wanted to stretch it a bit further than the international distance, so i decided on the half ironman option. i had gathered from chicago that my biking was my strongest discipline as i had ranked the best there even though i had taken the second half very easy to save juice for the run, the swim was my second best and with some more practive i figured i could seriously improve it. with running i had the most experience and did the worst in - that was not surprising given the blubber i am lugging with me. i made the decision that swimming was a top priority in the runup to the pineman and i spent at least 2000m in the pool on most days in the last 2 weeks. i had also worked on swimming more in a straight line so i would not end up with a zigzag as in chicago. in the pool i would close my eyes and swim a ways. first, i always went off to the left and i practiced on evening this out. i also decided that i'll give up some security margins for a better feel of my real limits in this. i also did not intend the pineman to be the only goal of my racing this year but a test as to how things were going. i also trained hard until thursday and squished my entire taper into a lazy friday.
i finished my teaching on friday and a few minutes before we left town i received some great work-related news. i knew this weeekend was to serve as a celebration - my spirits were high. support crew sweetie mooi and little unit sebastian and i checked into the deer creek state park lodge late friday and i rested well. i snuck out early morning and rode my bike to the start, they would join me later for the race. unfortunately, i had to wake them up and ask them to bring me my ID so i could check in ... sorry :-( i then had a nice little chat with fellow drs-tri guy Mike Randall as we prepared stuff in the transition area. it was a clear, cold and windy day and i would have loved to put on the race sweater that we got with our packet. i could not bring myself to wear it though as long as i had not completed it, just felt like it would be bad form - am i weird on this or do others share my philosophy on that? anyway, i was cold but i knew the water was pleasant and i could not wait to jump in. our wave come up quickly and i got open water quckly. it felt good to stretch out the arms and the swim training of the last few weeks really showed. i moved well, i got my directions pretty straight and i only really saw any traffic around the buoys. i finished the first 1km loop in 21 minutes, cool, and jumped in for the second lap feeling like a thousand bucks. i continued on what felt like a nice pace and finished that loop strong in 20:30 - wow, that was seriously better than i had pictured. i then ran up to the transition, hopped on the bike and thought about the good things that had happened this week. endorphines surging and i was flying along. i stared in disbelieve at the speedometer which showed an average pace of 23mph a ways into my first lap. this definitely felt like serious flying and i kept passing more folks with apparent ease until ...
at a turnaround i suddenly fell back to earth when i realized that we had gone with a strong breeze and now we were pedalling straight into it. i went down to 14mph right there and then. i had no experience on how to handle adversity on the bike and i figured i'll go with my general feeling from running as to far i could push it. i also decided to switch from kick-ass mode to maintenance mode. i wasn't breathing particularly hard so i put my head down, i leant on the bars and let my legs work on the upper end of comfort. i pushed into the pedals on a few harder uphills and did a great wheeeeeeeeee on some neat downhills. i hadn't had a chance to experience any hills around northwest ohio - actually i had not seen any on a bike in close to 25 years - and that was way cool. i got back to the start with what i felt was a dismal pace of 17mph average and i was wondering why not more people had passed me on that loop. i headed back out onto the course for my second loop a little less confident than before. reality started to sink in when i was now doing only 18mph even though i was going WITH the wind. legs felt like lead without any juice left. this turned really uggly in a hurry when i reached the turnaround and went straight into the wind for the following 15 miles. i realized that i had completely missjudged the punishment that i had subjected my legs to, i figured i would breath hard like in running and cut back from that a bit - that was wrong and i was now in serious trouble. i went from maintenance mode to survival mode and it took all of my focus to complete that second lap. i almost had to dismount on some fo the uphills but made it through that. i was being passed by many folks now and a bright moment came when i got to chat with a fellow rider, elizabeth from ann arbor, which took away some of the pain for a while. as i returned to the transition to the run i was also passed by a whole group of serious folks with serious bikes, and i realized that up to that point i had still been ahead of them despite my collaps - i guess i did push way too hard on the first bike loop. i saw sweetie mooi and sebastian at the transition to the run, chatted with them, and had nothing left for running. i could not even test all those great suggestsion that i had gotten from you bout how to make that transition smoother, there just was nothing left. i walked the first 3 miles and tried to find some energy from somewhere. this worked to some degree and i finished the remainder of the first loop in my dreamy, long-distance shuffle, i could feel some blisters developing on my feet and decided to not risk my training for the next couple of weeks just to save a few minutes. so i walked an uneventful second loop and finished in 7:53. i had hoped for something like 6:30 but i knew i had learned some important lessons today and decided to be happy for that. i added my finishers medal to my starting collection of tri-medals and headed for sack ...
best wishes,
back to lobsterman's running page